


there is a place

by bumbleking



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, cas cares for sam so much shut up, filling the gap between season 9 and 10, kind of a cas study because i love him, with a road trip :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumbleking/pseuds/bumbleking
Summary: It had been strange to discover he didn’t just get on with Lucifer’s vessel, the boy with the demon blood – he liked him. Respect had come first, of course, but an unexpected sort of recognition had come swiftly after.In the end, he supposes he and Sam are very much alike.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	there is a place

“Yes, there is a place / where someone loves you both before / and after they learn what you are.” 

—Neil Hilborn, “Lake”, _The Future_

* * *

“Sam,” Cas says.

It takes a moment for the man to respond, dull, tired eyes blinking before he sits up straighter, gripping the wheel. He shakes his head a little and clears his throat. “Yeah, Cas?” he says, not taking his eyes off the road.

“How far are we from our destination?”

“Uh…” Sam squints at a passing sign through the dark and the rapid sweep of the windshield wipers. Their _thump-thump-thump_ fills the relative silence, the rain drumming softer on the metal roof of the car. “A few hours.” He settles back into the driver’s seat, glancing at Cas. Concern pinches his tired face. “You should get some rest, man. I can wake you up when we get there.”

“I think we should stop,” Cas says suddenly.

“What? Why?” Sam darts his gaze between Cas and the road. “Are you alright?”

The immediate worry is touching, and a small smile flits over Castiel’s face despite himself. “Yes,” he says, trying his best for gentle — Winchesters are proud, stubborn things, he has long since learned. Most humans are in some way or another, but the Winchesters have made an art form of bullheadedness. They would not have lasted this long if they hadn’t. “I am, however, wary of your capacity to continue driving,” he continues.

Sam makes a low noise that might have been a laugh once. His hair scatters into his eyes as he shakes his head again, and he takes a hand off the wheel to scrape it back off his forehead, clutching his hair tight at the top of his head. “I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re tired,” Cas corrects. “You do need to rest sometime, Sam.”

“I will.” His brow furrows, mouth tucking into a frown. His hand thumps back onto the steering wheel. “Once we get there.”

Cas says nothing, gazing at Sam’s profile through the dark. His eyes are weaker than they were so he can only see his outline against the rain-streaked window, the suggestion of the planes of his face in the light reflecting from the headlights. He sees the bob of his throat as Sam swallows, hands twisting on the wheel.

“I’m _fine,_ Cas,” he insists, not looking at him.

Castiel sighs. Winchester stubbornness. He relaxes back into the passenger’s seat, gazing out the windshield at the streaks of rain illuminated by the headlights. On either side of the road, dark trees huddle against the weather, whipping past as they speed along. A sign marking a rest stop flashes past. He hears Sam fight a yawn and turns to look at him pointedly.

Sam catches it, glancing back and forth between him and the road again. “Stop it,” he grouses, though his words have no bite. “I’m—”

“Fine, yes, you’ve said.” Cas inclines his head, still staring.

He huffs, defensive, then sighs, shoulders sagging slightly. He lifts a hand to rub the heel into one of his eyes, grimacing, and blinks quickly. “Alright,” he admits. “I’m tired, sure. But this lead—”

“Will still be there tomorrow.” He doesn’t say that he doesn’t hold out hope on this particular lead panning out. It had seemed – what was the term? A _long shot._ But Sam had asked. Sam had asked, and this is for Dean. Of course Castiel came.

“You don’t know that.” But it seems a token protestation at best. He gazes dully out the windshield, exhaustion deepening the lines in his face. Cas wishes he could take it away, smooth the worried creases that sit perpetually in his brow and the corners of his mouth, but even when he possessed his own grace, even when it wasn’t faltering and flickering inside him, that would have been out of his power. The most he could have done is make Sam sleep.

Though, watching him now, Cas is sure that would do Sam some good. 

“Alright,” Sam says, acquiescing, though Cas hasn’t said anything further. The car slows as the exit for the rest stop approaches, and its tires crunch over gravel as they turn, swinging into the trees. The lights of the stop gleam through the rain, a squat building that bears a considerable resemblance to every other gas station they’ve encountered on the road, but larger.

Sam pulls under the awning next to the gas pumps and stops, sitting back, hands sliding off the wheel. Cas expects him to get out, but he only sits there, face strangely unreadable. “Cas,” he says, his name a quick burst, “what if—” He stops.

Cas watches and waits. Sam glances at him, conflict in every line of his face, hazel eyes shadowed in the harsh white lighting of the stop.

“What if we don’t find him?” Even as he says it his expression crumples, fracturing into an uncertainty that seems almost unnatural. Sam has been so driven, so _determined_ to find his brother; to see him falter now may be human, but it doesn’t seem like Sam. “What if we _never_ find him? I don’t—I can’t…” He ducks his head, a shuddering breath leaving him.

He reaches for Sam, gripping his shoulder tight. It’s a gesture he’s seen Dean perform endless times. “We will.”

“It’s been weeks, Cas, and nothing. I thought by now there’d be—” He shakes his head in frustration. “I don’t know. _Something._ A hint, a trail. Something to go on. It feels like we’re running in circles, and you’re right. I am tired.” He laughs, but all amusement has been wrung out of the sound. “I’m so tired, and I shouldn’t be.” 

Cas tilts his head.

“I mean—” Sam sits forward, turning a little to face him, answering the unasked question. “If it were Dean,” he says, “and I was the one… lost, he wouldn’t stop, he wouldn’t sleep. He’d tear up the whole _country_ looking for me. I know he would. And every time I stop or slow down, I just think—”

“You think you’re failing him.” Cas frowns and squeezes his shoulder. “Sam—”

“I know.” He ducks his head, hair falling into his eyes. He speaks very softly. “I know.” 

He says it anyway, because he gets the sense it’s something Sam needs to hear. “You’re not.”

Sam nods, mouth pressed into a tight line, and they sit in silence for a long moment before he sighs, straightening up and clearing his throat. “Thanks, Cas,” he says, voice hoarse. “I’ll fill up the tank and then we’ll—”

“Rest,” Cas says.

Sam falters, mouth moving silently, but as he holds Castiel’s steady gaze he nods. “Alright,” he says, resigned, and pops the driver’s side door open. The keys jangle as he shoves them into his pocket. “We’ll _rest.”_

After he’s stood and he pauses and turns, leaning down into view with a hand on the roof. “You want anything from the stop?” 

* * *

“So,” Sam says, “this is a corndog.”

Castiel takes the offered foodstuff with no small amount of skepticism. Still, he says, “I know what a corndog is, Sam.” He examines the fried dough, turning the stick between thumb and forefinger. “I _did_ work at a Gas-N-Sip, for a time.”

He laughs, the noise startled and genuine, but quickly bites it back as Cas looks at him. “Sorry,” he says. “I just, uh, forgot that. I guess.” He turns his face away, but Cas can see a smile lingering on his lips as he twists the top off a bottle of water.

Truthfully, he doesn’t understand Sam’s amusement, but it’s nevertheless comforting to see. “I never did try one, though,” he muses. “I am surprised you’d get this for me, of all things. Your eating habits tend towards healthier fare.”

Sam shrugs, pulling heavily from the water bottle and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s a gas station,” he says. “You’ve gotta do the whole junk food heart attack at least once. It’s part of the experience.” He eyes Cas as he turns the key in the ignition, the engine rumbling to life. “Will you be able to eat it? With your superpowered angel tastebuds and all.”

Cas sniffs it, testing, and Sam chuckles. “I may,” he says. “My grace is… not what it was.” An understatement, but there are things Sam doesn’t need to know. He takes a bite and immediately grimaces.

“Too molecule-y?” They coast into a more shadowed area of the lot and park. The cool dark is easier on Castiel’s eyes than the glare of the fluorescent lights. He chews, still grimacing, and swallows.

“It’s strange,” he decides.

“Strange good or strange bad?”

Cas furrows his brow. “Strange,” he repeats. Sam laughs, unwrapping a granola bar of some sort, and they eat in silence that isn’t uncomfortable. Castiel has gotten better at sensing these things. Things with Sam are rarely difficult, a fact for which Cas is both grateful and incessantly surprised by. When there is dissent it is almost always an external force that sows it: Sam and Cas, left to their own devices, get on easily.

It had been strange to discover he didn’t just get on with Lucifer’s vessel, the boy with the demon blood — he _liked_ him. Respect had come first, of course, but an unexpected sort of recognition had come swiftly after.

In the end, he supposes he and Sam are very much alike. 

Sam catches his eye and smiles around a mouthful of granola, and Cas finds his lips twitching back. 

* * *

The storm has intensified, the sound of the rain on the metal roof louder than the rasp of Castiel’s breathing or the soft rumble of Sam snoring in the front seat. He’d instructed Cas to lay in the back seat, and he’d tilted his own seat back as far as it would go, resting with his arms folded over his chest and head tilted to the side. With his size, Cas doubts there’s any configuration he could lay in that would make him truly comfortable, but he’d fallen asleep quickly enough. Perhaps from a lifetime of practice. 

Cas has trouble doing the same. In the early days of his humanity, sleep had felt unnatural and a little terrifying; it made him uneasy to think himself so vulnerable. Coupled with the loss of his grace and the myriad other little things he had to learn to simply survive… The fact that he’s doing it again brings him back to those uncertain weeks where he’d been lost and more alone than he’d ever been. 

_Not lost,_ he reminds himself. His gaze flickers to Sam’s face, turned halfway towards him in the dark. _Not alone._

His face is smoother in sleep, less troubled. His hair has fallen into his eyes again. His eyelids flicker, a small flinch passing over his face, but just as quickly it’s gone. 

Castiel doesn’t have to wonder what it is he dreams about. He knows. Those nightmares were, for a time, his as well. 

He turns onto his side, tucking his coat in tighter around him to ward off the cold. He watches the rise and fall of Sam’s chest until his eyes are heavy enough to drift shut on their own, and then — nothing. 

When next he opens his eyes, the car is rumbling beneath his cheek and he’s drooled onto the seat below him. It takes a moment for his foggy mind to catch up. He sits up blearily, rubbing the half-dried spit off his chin and looking around him, squinting in confusion. Something heavy slides off him to pool in his lap. The indistinct shapes of trees move past the windows, lit in the half-light of very early morning. 

Sam looks over his shoulder at the rustle of Cas’ movements. “Oh, hey,” he says. “You feeling alright?” 

Cas keeps blinking, peering out the windshield at the illuminated stretch of road in front of them. “Yes,” he answers automatically. 

Sam glances back at him and then quickly does it again, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “Cas, your—” He bites his lip against his widening smile, though his eyes give him away, crinkling at the corners. “Your hair is, uh.” 

“What?” 

He shakes his head and refocuses on the road, though his dimples remain in his cheeks. “Nothing, never mind. But you are feeling better?” 

“Yes,” he repeats, brow furrowing. “Why do you ask? And why are you driving? You’re meant to be resting, Sam.” 

“Oh, I was—I mean, I did.” His hands twist on the wheel. “And then I, uh, I woke up, so I figured, hey, might as well.” He scratches the back of his neck, shoulders bobbing in a shrug. His voice dips lower as he continues. “You were shivering, Cas. In your sleep.” 

“Ah.” He looks down into his lap. Sam’s jacket is crumpled there, fallen from where it had apparently been draped over him. He fingers the collar thoughtfully. 

“You’d tell me, right? If there was something wrong?” 

Cas meets Sam’s worried eyes in the rearview mirror. He opens his mouth to answer in the affirmative, but the words don’t come. He leans into the back of Sam’s seat with the weight of a turn, bracing his forearm against it, and stays there. “I am not well, Sam.” 

He doesn’t say anything, his silence both expectant and patient, but Cas sees the concern in his face deepen. He’s sorry to have made it so, so he chooses his next words carefully. 

“My grace—that is, my borrowed grace—it’s not…” He searches for a human turn of phrase. _“Sitting well_ with me. It’s fading.” 

_“Fading?”_ Sam echoes. “So, what, you’re turning human again?” 

Castiel hesitates. “Yes, something like that.” He doesn’t want Sam to worry, not when there’s— 

“Is there anything I can do?” 

He closes his eyes, so grateful for and so saddened by Sam’s earnestness. He’s silent long enough that Sam prompts, “Castiel?” 

“No, Sam,” he says, “there’s nothing you can do. But—thank you.” 

“Yeah, of course,” Sam says, like it’s so simple. “Just let me know if that changes.” He glances back at him again, flashing a worn smile that Cas feels is for his benefit more than anything else. “But hey, if you’re not so much an angel anymore, again, maybe you should put a seatbelt on, buddy.” 

“A—oh. Right.” Sheepish, Cas sits back. Sam turns on the radio, flicking intently through news station after news station, and Castiel can feel the brief respite they found slipping away. Now it’s back to the road, back to the mission. 

He rests his forehead against the glass of the window and watches the sun come up over the trees. Sam pauses long enough on a music station for a few notes of a song to come through, and then he lingers on that station long enough to let it play out in its entirety. He doesn’t sing, but Cas can see him mouthing the words, fingers tapping on the wheel to the beat. He might not even realize he’s doing it. 

Cas smiles, lets his eyes close, and just for a moment lets himself believe it will be alright. 

**Author's Note:**

> bitches looking at sam and cas' narrative parallels be like "is anyone going to ship that" and not even wait for an answer. i'm bitches


End file.
